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Morals and Ethics of Cloning
Cloning is the process of taking cells from a donor, placing them in a culture dish where the nutrients are minimal, so the cells stop dividing and switch their "active genes". The cells are then put next to an unfertilized egg. The nucleus is sucked out of the egg leaving an empty egg cell containing all the cellular machinery necessary to produce an embryo. An electric shock is used to fuse the egg and cell together. A second shock is then used to mimic the act of fertilization and help begin cell division. After the egg has successfully moved to the stage of an embryo it is then placed in to the uterus of a surrogate mother. When born, all the genes are the same as the donor of the cell.
In 1997 Dr. Ian Wilmut, a British scientist successfully cloned a sheep named Dolly. This turned the scientific world upside-down. The success of the experiment is considered by all as an amazing achievement in science. However, ethics and morals must surface to regulate cloning. It is understood that individuality is the most important part of life. Individuality is given to a person at birth and considered a right they will have for rest of their life. There is also a fear that the clone may only be produced to live the life of the clone, thus causing severe emotional damage as well pain and suffering for the clone. The progression of the clone may be limited, the advance in idea development will slowly die off. Evolution could come to a halt, because with clones, diversity will be limited and there will not be as many advances in society. The cells, in all humans, will all be the same and there will not be a process of natural selection and diversity.
Another controversial question facing the cloning process is: How will the clones be treated? The emotions of the clones need to be taken in to consideration, after all they are humans too. "What is common to these various views, however, is a shared understanding that being a 'person' is different from being the manipulated 'object' of other peoples desires and expectations"(Biomedical Ethics). People, as clones, will be studied, prodded, and poked which in turn will cause much unwanted anxiety and emotional distress. There will also be problems with relationships between parents and the clone for understandable reasons.
Structure – The work is formatted to be a play. It has three acts, each beginning with stage directions.
Children grow up watching movies such as Star Wars as well as Gattaca that contain the idea of cloning which usually depicts that society is on the brink of war or something awful is in the midsts but, with todays technology the sci-fi nature of cloning is actually possible. The science of cloning obligates the scientific community to boil the subject down into the basic category of morality pertaining towards cloning both humans as well as animals. While therapeutic cloning does have its moral disagreements towards the use of using the stem cells of humans to medically benefit those with “incomplete” sets of DNA, the benefits of therapeutic cloning outweigh the disagreements indubitably due to the fact that it extends the quality of life for humans.
Cloning is a real process that scientists use today to reproduce an exact living copy of DNA from the DNA of another living organism. When the idea of cloning first came about in the early 1800’s people believed it to be more science fiction than actual science. People didn’t understand the concept of cloning and therefore was naturally scared of the subject. It is best understood by how the Department of Animal Sciences at Cornell University explains it, “Cloning is a method of producing two or more genetically identical organisms by asexual reproduction. This means that there is only one parent cell, from which all the genetic information will come. Thus, the DNA sequence of cloned organisms is exactly the same as that of the parent cell.” Despite the general population’s disbelief there have been major scientific advances in the cloning process in the last fifty years. After many years of trial and error the first successful clone was created.
Technology is radically changing and improving every single year, with new advances and inventions all the time. However, with all these changes and developments in technology, there are also a series of problems and ethical issues that it may impose on society. In the scientific fiction novel written by Nancy Farmer, The House of the Scorpion, Farmer introduces the idea of a society where technology is used incorrectly and to a person’s own advantage. The House of the Scorpion brings up a variety of moral and ethical issues, mainly cloning and technology used for all the immoral purposes. In an article written by Elizabeth Landau, "Cloning Used to Make Stem Cells from Adult Humans," she explores how our modern day world and scientists have finally developed a method of deriving stem cells from a person’s own cloned cells. In the future, with greater technology and research, it may be possible to create a complete clone of a person. Technology may be very useful and efficient, but if used incorrectly, it can cause drastic effects and problems for all of mankind. Farmer’s novel The House of the Scorpion and Landau’s article, "Cloning Used to Make Stem Cells from Adult Humans," explains the future in cloning with newer technologies, and possible concerns that may arise from it.
Cloning is the creation of an organism that is an exact genetic copy of another. Every single bit of DNA is the same. There are three different types of cloning. Gene cloning produces copies of genes or fragments of DNA, reproductive cloning creates copies of whole animals, and therapeutic cloning builds embryonic stem cells for experiments aimed at creating tissues to replace injured or diseased tissues. In 1997 scientists in Scotland announced the birth of a clone. Its name was Dolly; after the American country singer. She was the clone of an adult female sheep, and the first mammal to ever be cloned successfully. As Dolly matured, she mated with a ram, and gave birth to a lamb showing that clones have the ability to reproduce. Dolly died at the age of six. According to Sheep 101, the life expectancy for a sheep is 10-12 years, but some sheep can live up to 20 years.
Professor: To answer your first question, Kristen, an undifferentiated cell is a cell that has the ability to create other specific cells, such as skin, hair, brain, and muscles, as it activates certain genes on chromosomes. For your second question, the concept of cloning is really not that complicated to understand. Allow me to explain as I split Dr. Wilmut's cloning process into three steps. During the first step, udder cells from a six-year-old Finn Dorset ewe were taken and placed into a culture dish. The culture dish, containing low levels of nutrients, starved the cells, causing them to stop their dividing and hibernate its active genes. Meanwhile, the nucleus with its DNA from an unfertilized egg--also called an oocyte--taken from a Scottish Blackface ewe, is sucked out with a hair thin pipette, leaving the empty egg with all its cellular tools needed to produce an embryo. By the way, this process is called the nuclear transfer. Okay, now onto the second step; the egg cell and a donor cell are placed next to each other and fused together, like soap bubbles, by an electric pulse.
In this case, this will be the beginning of human degradation because clones will be treated as commodities or purchased products. Although couples commonly have babies for purposes such as improving a marriage or continuing a family name, human clones can possibly serve as savior siblings or replacements. Savior siblings will only function as spare parts, while a replacement child stands in a shadow of their deceased clone. They represent means to an end by being forced into existence for a sole purpose to alleviate pain and misery from the preexisting. In my opinion, reproductive cloning will turn into a game for the countless number of egotistical people that our society obtains. As irrational as this may be, human cells will eventually be sold, so other people can produce babies that resemble past legends, or current superstars, and even dead geniuses. From the article by Philip Kitcher in the Science, Ethics, and Public Policy of Human Cloning book, the author recognized how prevalent cloning will become when commenters ventured how legitimate it would be to clone Einstein. He indicated, “Polls showed that Mother Teresa was the most popular choice for person-to-be-cloned, although a film star (Michelle Pfeiffer) was not far behind, and Bill and Hilary Clinton obtained some support〖."〗^7The quote signifies how cloning will eventually convert into a luxury to please peoples’ irrational means, increasing the chances for people to be equated to their genetic determinism. Kant identifies humans as authors to the moral law because of our possession of human dignity. According to Devolder’s article, “UNESCO's Universal
In the past, cloning always seemed like a faraway scientific fantasy that could never really happen, but sometimes reality catches up to human ingenuity and people discover that a fictional science is all too real. Such was the fate of cloning when Dolly, a cloned sheep, came into existence during 1997, as Beth Baker explains (Baker 45). In addition to opening the eyes of millions of people, the breakthrough raised many questions about the morality of cloning humans. The greatest moral question is, when considering the pros against the cons, if human cloning is an ethical practice. There are two different types of cloning and both entail completely different processes and both are completely justifiable at the end of the day.
The reasoning against the use and application of such technology, have mainly been established on common misconceptions regarding the psychological aspect of the process. For example, many still associate, [despite the profound evidence against the notion], a clone as being an exact mental and physical copy of the original organism. There isn’t, nor there has ever been, any scientific indication to support this theory. In terms of physical appearance however, yes, the newly produced organism will possess eerily similar features to that of the original. However, transfer of conceptual and emotional characteristics is not possible at this stage in time; the technology is far too inferior. In relation to therapeutic cloning, an extremely common reason used to oppose the idea, is the use of fertilised embryos in order to derive stem cells. Many activists and religious leaders believe that it is classified as eradicating potential life, and therefore is morally unacceptable. Scientists continue to discredit these claims, believing that the opposition’s reasoning, is a dogma that has outlived its
Not so far in the future, a young boy of the age of six, dying a heart-wrenching death, will only be able survive with a bone marrow transplant. His parents will have searched near and far for a match, but none will come to their aid. The only possible way that they can produce a perfect match for their son's bone marrow is to clone their son. Unfortunately, at this time this topic is still being discussed and debated upon with the government. Their only child that has been their treasure for six years might die. A clone of their son becomes their apple of aspiration to keep the treasure from being buried.
An underlying theme in A Doll's House, by Henrik Ibsen, is the rebellion against social expectations to follow what one believes in their heart. This theme is demonstrated as several of the play's characters break away from the social norms of their time and act on their own beliefs. No one character demonstrates this better than Nora. Nora rebels against social expectations, first by breaking the law, and later by taking the drastic step of abandoning her husband and children.
In recent years our world has undergone many changes and advancements, cloning is a primary example of this new modernism. On July 5th, 1995, Dolly, the first cloned animal, was created. She was cloned from a six-year-old sheep, making her cells genetically six years old at her creation. However, scientists were amazed to see Dolly live for another six years, until she died early 2005 from a common lung disease found in sheep. This discovery sparked a curiosity for cloning all over the world, however, mankind must answer a question, should cloning be allowed? To answer this question some issues need to be explored. Is cloning morally correct, is it a reliable way to produce life, and should human experimentation be allowed?
Those of you who have just read A Doll's House for the first time will, I suspect, have little trouble forming an initial sense of what it is about, and, if past experience is any guide, many of you will quickly reach a consensus that the major thrust of this play has something to do with gender relations in modern society and offers us, in the actions of the heroine, a vision of the need for a new-found freedom for women (or a woman) amid a suffocating society governed wholly by unsympathetic and insensitive men.
In recent years, many new breakthroughs in the areas of science and technology have been discovered. A lot of these discoveries have been beneficial to scientific community and to the people of the world. One of the newest breakthroughs is the ability to clone. Ever since Ian Wilmut and his co-workers completed the successful cloning of an adult sheep named Dolly, there has been an ongoing debate on whether it is right or wrong to continue the research of cloning (Burley). Recently, in February 2001, CNN conducted a poll that stated, 90% of American adults think that cloning humans is a bad idea (Robinson). Even though the majority of Americans are opposed to human cloning, there are many benefits that will come from the research of it. Advancements in the medical field and in the fertility process will arise from human cloning. These advancements make cloning very beneficial to the human society.
“A Doll House” by Ibsen exposes one of the main trials facing Nora and women of today that a lot of men tend to underestimate women. They assume that